Firstly, I am in the UK so I can appreciate that whilst we aren’t exactly a bed of roses, the general mood in the USA is significantly lower than over here.

I guess it may just be the communities I have joined recently, but after years and years of seeing pretty dispiriting stuff on the likes of Twitter and Facebook, sports sites and even gaming sites, the past couple of months have seen me enjoy myself way more on the internet. I used Reddit a couple of years back and found it to be a pretty awful place, but recently went back to it and in the places I am actively participating in, people seem to be way friendlier. This ranges from games (No Man’s Sky, Nintendo Switch etc) to sports (football/soccer, NHL) and even the odd glance at political areas. My Twitter feed has, for the past few weeks, been a mixture of good humour as well as insightful tweets. I have become a member of a Dad group on Facebook and that place has been super, super helpful as we all try and get through 3am with screaming babies together. And this place has been great, obviously, with reasoned debate and very little angst.

Maybe I have just learned to ignore a lot of stuff? Maybe I am just looking at the 1% of the internet that is not full of terrible people. Maybe everyone has thought “we are all going down, lets enjoy the last few moments together”. I felt I should speak out though, and say “Yay Internet”.

I feel like the more specific the shared interest of the group, the more helpful the discussion (in general). I’m participating in discussions and projects with a couple of small groups and it is wonderful to get to know a few folks and be able to mentally attach their handle to their contributions.

I’ve grown up on the internet, and I haven’t really noticed much change much over the years. It’s just all about finding your own sites and communities that jive with what you’re looking for. Curation is key.

I can’t say much for the internet as a whole, especially since I’ve withdrawn from much of it, but I’ve personally been making an effort to be more positive online in the past year due to, well, the past year.

The state of the world itself can feel like a negative on its own, so I want to do what I can to instil hope and positivity where I can.

The smaller a community the better it is IMO because everyone gets to know each other. It’s kind of like playing on the same server over and over again vs just doing match making. You see the same names/avatars and figure out what kind of person someone is. Makes it a lot more personal.

Honestly the best thing I’ve ever done to ease my blood pressure was cutting out facebook and unsubbing from default subreddits. Really glad I never got into Twitter, place just seems like it was made for people to pick fights with random internet strangers.

I’ve had difficulties with social anxiety after getting really sick and depressed and becoming a hermit, so using the internet as a way to put myself out into places as a stepping stone to doing that in other places has been really helpful. So the internet can be good.